The native calendar app on your iPhone or iPad is pretty great, and since it’s built right into iOS and the info is on your iPhone, not the internet, you have access to all your calendar events even when you’re offline or can’t find a network signal.

Now, many of us use Google Calendar to schedule our stuff. Personally, I like that I can sync my calendars across the web and my iOS devices, and share events with other Google Calendar users. But I’ve always wanted to have my events on my iPhone’s Calendar app, too, for the whole “can’t find a network” reason above.

It’s pretty easy, really, to get it all to sync together.

Launch the Settings app on your iOS device of choice, and then scroll down to Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Tap “Add Account…” and then tap on Gmail. Enter your Google account information, with your name, email address, password, and some sort of account description. I typed in Calendar.

Tap Next in the upper right of the screen and Google will validate your account info. Turn OFF Mail, Contacts, and Notes if you’re just wanting to sync your calendar, or leave the services on you want to sync on your iOS device. Make sure Calendars is toggled to ON.

Hit Save at the top right, and then decide if you want to keep your current calendar info on your iPhone (I do) or you want to just use event data from Google. If you choose the former, tap on the “Keep on my iPhone” option. If you don’t care about device data, hit “Delete.”

Syncing will automatically start right away, so you can check your Calendar app for relevant Google info. This is a true sync, too, so you can add stuff on your iPhone or iPad and expect it to show up on your Google calendar when you access that on the web. Slick!

Rob, I’m a big Cult of Mac fan and also follow all your articles…but this one leaves me a bit perplexed. The ability to do this (exactly as you describe) has been around forever. If your article is intended as merely informational…great. But it’s written as if it’s a revolutionary discovery that couldn’t be done until now. In any event…it’s good for those who don’t know about it.

PedroR

Hi!This sync happened automatically when I first configured my iPad, and I ended with lots of duplicate entries and duplicate calendars in my Calendar app!But what I really need is to delete from the Calendar app everything that was copied into it from Google.Anyone could help?Delete one by one is a daunting task. There’s no way I can do it. Thanks!

I have so far failed to spot the difference between the two sync methods. I’ve heard that CalDAV is a real-time sync but have not noticed that as of yet. I also sync the iPhone calendar with Outlook on my PC but due to the inability of iPhone (or iTunes for that matter) to sync one and the same calendar to two or more services, I use this method to sync the iphone calendar to Outlook: http://www.copytrans.net/support/how-to-transfer-iphone-calendar-to-outlook/

About the author

Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he'll really appreciate it.

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